Principle 13: Institute a Vigorous Program of Education

Principle 13: Institute a vigorous program of education and encourage self-improvement for everyone. A school system needs not just good people, but people that are improving with education. Advances in teaching and learning processes will have their roots in knowledge.

Principle 7: Adopt & Institute Leadership

Adopt and institute leadership aimed at helping people to do a better job. Management's responsibility must shift from focusing solely on outcomes to focusing on the quality of learning experiences and services produced by the educational system.

Management Myths II

Last month, I described three common management myths W. Edwards Deming worked to dispel. These included the myth of best practices, the myth of the hero educator, and the myth of performance appraisal. I cautioned that it is important to keep in mind that you may very well experience some cognitive dissonance as you read. There is a counterintuitive thread to much of the Deming philosophy, which of course makes sense given that he advocated for a change in state from the prevailing system of management to something better. This month, I’ll unpack the myth of merit pay, the myth of accountability, and the myth of extrinsic motivators.

How do you measure remote learning engagement?

For the last two months, my colleague Ben Pacht and I have been writing about the work we are doing at United Schools Network (USN) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent school closure order in Ohio (see here, here, and here). In this fourth post in the series, we’ll summarize some key points we’ve made before, plus offer a few ideas specific to measuring and analyzing remote learning engagement.

Successful remote learning requires a whole new system

The transition to remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic has significantly shifted how United Schools Network (USN) plans and delivers educational experiences to its students. We've outlined our remote learning system—and it is helpful to think of it as a system—in our Education Plan. As soon as that document was created, and the new system was outlined, we immediately started thinking about how to improve it.

Getting Better: Improvement Science during COVID-19

As everybody in the education sector is painfully aware, the COVID-19 outbreak has drastically changed the way we think about and execute our jobs for the foreseeable future. Normal life has been put on hold while we determine how to navigate the uncertain months ahead. Questions materialize much faster than answers, and it is difficult to keep up with the near constant updates coming from federal, state, and local officials. I am hard-pressed to identify a moment in my life that has been as impactful, rapidly-evolving, and confusing. I don’t believe it’s hyperbolic to say that this is a truly unprecedented time for those of us in education.

Seven Early Lessons about Shifting Education during a Crisis

Once we at the United Schools Network learned about Governor DeWine’s school closure order on the afternoon of March 12, the pivot to remote learning began immediately. The first thing we did was create a COVID-19 Task Force in order to start planning for the initial three-week closure. While those plans were quickly implemented, we’ve now transitioned to creating longer term plans that address learning needs as Ohio schools will remain physically closed to May 1 and possibly beyond.

This limited (hopefully) blog series is our attempt to share what we’re learning during the pandemic. We’ve outlined seven early lessons in this post, which are focused on setting a network or district up for success throughout the closure

Why Evidence-Based Practices Don’t Work: Part II

There’s a large gap between the current state of education sector R & D and our aspirations for this research. As sectors, education and medicine have lots in common and analogies are often drawn between the disciplines. However, when it comes to evidence-based practices, there are stark differences between the two fields.

Getting Better: Can we nudge our students toward better habits?

Many years ago, I found myself trapped in an interesting cycle with my dental hygienist. A few times each year, I would stretch out on her chair and sit patiently as she picked at, polished, and flossed my teeth. While the overall health of my mouth held up under her close scrutiny, she always mentioned one habit I couldn’t seem to shake.

How We’re Learning to Improve This School Year

This year at United Schools Network (USN), we’re learning the science of improvement and sharing our journey in the hopes that it will make your improvement work a little easier. We’ve just kicked off this work, but we’ve already learned quite a bit about starting an improvement project. Check out the seven lessons we’ve learned so far.

John A. DuesAugust 29, 2018education, improvement science, School Performance Institute, school improvement

Have you seen a high-performing, high-poverty school in action?

Like most people working in high-poverty schools, I had never seen a high-performing school serving similar students in action. Think about that for a moment. In the vast majority of struggling schools, it is unlikely the people that work there have ever experienced organizational-level success.